"You're making friends with vampires now? That's badass! I mean, the circumstances kind of suck, but…what're they like? Are they like seven Constances? Because as much as I love Constance, I don't think I could handle seven of her at once."

It felt wonderful to be on the phone, laughing with Morgan, like they had since they were teens. If Lilah closed her eyes, she could pretend that they were in the living room, at home, in their pajamas, laughing after long days at their respective jobs. She could imagine Zoe upstairs curled up in her bed, in her rainbow themed bedroom, cuddling her collection of stuffed unicorns, with a book still in her hands as she slumbered. She could picture Phoebe in her room too, snoring, dark curls splayed out against her pillow.

She wished the picture remained the same when she opened her eyes.

"They're not all Constance, Morg," Lilah replied. "But they're all nice, as far as I can tell…I'm actually going to hang out with one of them, Alice. We're going furniture shopping on my next day off."

"I hope she has a better sense of color theory than you…you know you don't need to include every color of the rainbow in every room, right?"

"I know," Lilah said. She wound the phone cord around her fingers as if it would restrain some of the anxiety she felt welling in her chest. She changed the subject, knowing she'd have to ask it sooner rather than later, and thus, asked, "Any news?"

She didn't have to elaborate. Morgan knew she was asking for any news about her father. Where he was, what he was planning. What Phoebe and Constance had come up with to, for lack of a better term, take care of her father. Her sperm donor.

Morgan sighed. "Nothing new…no one's seen him. Last time anyone saw any of your family was when we were in Boston with Zoe. Mom tried to get in contact with your sister, the one who wrote you in the first place, for more details, but she refused to talk to her for very long on the phone. She said she wanted to help but she couldn't—her husband was going to be home soon and she didn't want to upset him."

Lilah clenched her jaw. So hard she felt as though she was about to crack a molar or two.

Her husband. Ruth, her sister who had written to her, was nineteen years old. When Lilah was nineteen, she was in college, taking more classes than she needed to because she wanted to learn anything and everything she wasn't allowed to know about for the first fifteen years of her life. She was going on casual dates and realizing the hard way that college dating sucked, she was being dragged along to parties by Morgan, she was experimenting with her sense of style, she was learning about magic and how to control her gifts from Phoebe. Aside from her academics, she wasn't responsible for much, because she was nineteen and Phoebe recognized that nineteen year old girls were supposed to be learning and having fun and experiencing the world, not responsible for making major life decisions.

At nineteen, Ruth was married. Lilah should've known. She'd signed the letter as Ruth Weiss, not Ruth Porter. She'd been too terrified of the warning about their father to think much about the name change. Now that she did, it hurt her heart, because she knew what marriage meant for women in their family, in their church. She was married to a man and responsible for all aspects of taking care of him and subject to his will, without question. She could not learn, she could not make mistakes, she could not do a damn thing of her own accord. She was the property of her husband now. She would behave as such.

Lilah wracked her brain, trying to place the name 'Weiss' at their church. It wasn't a familiar surname to her. Ruth had been married off to a man, or a boy, if she was a bit more lucky, from some other church that was, undoubtedly, just as backwards as their father's church. Lilah didn't know if that was a good or bad thing for Ruth.

She wondered if Ruth had a child. Or children. She wondered if Luke, her brother, who was only two years younger than her, was also married. Surely if they'd married Ruth off, they'd found a suitable wife for Luke. Her heart fell at the thought of it. She knew how Luke didn't want to be married. He never wanted to be like their father, but his path had been chosen for him before he was born: he was going to grow up and become the next David Porter. Part of that meant marrying a woman and having as many children as god would bless them with. That, in particular, made Luke's blood run cold.

"…Lilah?" came Morgan's voice. Morgan, her adopted sister, who she loved so dearly and missed so desperately.

"Yeah, sorry, I just got distracted."

Morgan chuckled a bit. "You always do, with that brain of yours. I don't know how you sleep at night."

"I don't know either."

"Well, anyway, we don't have concrete proof of this, but Mom's been working on her divination skills to see if she can get any idea of what your sperm donor is up to," Morgan continued. "She saw something faint about him driving on the highway with a couple of other men from his whackadoodle church, somewhere pretty flat, lots of cornfields, middle of the country, y'know. Could've still been Arkansas…we figured that your uncle thought we lived in Boston or Salem, because, obviously, those are the only two places witches can live, and once he realized we weren't there, they all went back to the drawing board."

"So I won't be coming home soon," Lilah said, feeling a bit defeated.

"'Soon' is relative," Morgan replied. "So don't get too down on yourself. You're safe, we're safe, that's what's important for now. And Mom and Constance said that, if need be, they'll try to be civil with your sperm donor. But if him and his church people can't be civil, neither will they."

XXX

At the Cullen home, Lilah Porter was still the topic of conversation. None of them were worried about her father. He would easily be squashed out if he came for Lilah. Carlisle would not suffer a witch hunter to live if he saw one.

However, in their short time together, Lilah had proven herself to be, well, likable. Even Rosalie, ever-skeptical of outsiders, saw that Lilah didn't look at her family like they were the monsters they were. Rosalie, who hadn't wanted to meet Lilah because she had already made up her mind to hate her, because she thought that Lilah wanted to use her family for what they could do for her. Rosalie, who had never so quickly and profoundly been proven wrong as she was when Lilah Porter had a breakdown in her living room, because she was so adamant about not being a burden, not to ask anything of anyone.

Edward had given her a shit-eating grin as soon as Lilah pulled out of their driveway. He knew that Rosalie had felt sympathy for Lilah. After decades of claiming never to have felt sympathy for a human, or even a vampire outside of their family, she felt something for Lilah. Rosalie tried to brush it off, saying that she was only happy to see Alice so happy about having a new friend, but Edward knew it was more than that.

She was sure he'd never let her live it down for the rest of eternity. Neither would Emmett, for that matter, but at least Emmett knew when to shut his mouth around her. And just because Rosalie felt some sympathy for Lilah, did not at all mean she liked her. It especially did not mean that she thought her family should get so involved with her.

Alice, of course, was the most pleased with Lilah's arrival into her life. The circumstance was not ideal, obviously, but it had been so long since Alice had gotten to make a new friend that she was able to push the circumstance into the back of her mind. It felt too good to be true, having a new human in her life to be friends with. A human whose blood didn't even tempt her.

Jasper, with his empathic abilities, was overwhelmed with Alice's feelings about Lilah—excitement, hope, the early stages of affection. It was rare, too, that her emotions were so powerful, so potent, that they almost completely overrode his ability to feel anyone else's emotions.

"You already really like her, huh?" he asked.

She bounced on her heels, looking up at him with that infectious, giddy hope in her eyes.

"I think so," she said. "I mean, I love all of you and I love Rosalie, but it's so exciting to get to meet a new friend…I know you don't feel the same way about having more people in your life, but it's been a lot harder for me. We never stay put very long, and even if we did, I could never have anything real with anyone we meet…it seems like a blessing to have met Lilah. I'm not tempted to drink her blood, I don't have to hide anything from her, and she doesn't have to hide anything from me…and she does seem so nice, doesn't she, Jas?"

Jasper grinned down at his favorite sister. If anyone deserved to be so happy, it was Alice. He knew that their vampiric lifestyle had been hard on her, as it was so at odds with her tendency to be a social butterfly. She tried to keep her loneliness and sadness to herself. She'd done a decent job at that with the rest of their family, but she couldn't hide it from Jasper.

That loneliness had been a building block of the closeness between the two of them. He had been lonely for years, wandering the country by himself. Alice had found him decades after he'd left the never-ending battles on the southern border. After he'd split from Peter, to give him some much deserved time with his mate, Charlotte. He was lost. And Alice had appeared, a literal ray of sunshine, with the promise that a new, wonderful life and family waited for them.

They were more alike than not, she told him. Her psychic visions showed that they were meant to be a part of Carlisle and Esme Cullen's coven. Her visions never showed that either of them were meant to have a mate.

At first, that stung. After seeing what Peter and Charlotte had, it was impossible for Jasper not to want the same for himself. For a long time, he thought that he'd had that with Maria. Of course, he hadn't. She had only used him. But, in his wandering, he had hoped he'd find his mate. He found plenty of beautiful, fascinating, intelligent vampires, sure. But none of them were his mate.

It was a hard pill for him to swallow, but he rationalized it by his past. Surely he didn't deserve a mate. Even for a vampire, he'd been exceptionally violent and ruthless.

The universe, god, or whatever force there was had decided to punish him by forcing him to walk the eternal night alone.

With Alice, it wasn't so bad. They had each other as best friends and confidants. She never foresaw herself having a mate either and could understand how he felt about the matter. She chalked it up to her only being interested in women. She said it was a lot less possible, statistically, for her to find a mate because of her sexuality. He said it was bullshit, but in all of their decades together, his calling it bullshit hadn't changed a thing.

At least they had each other. At least they had their family. And at least Alice had Lilah now.

"You should come with us!" Alice said.

"No, no, I don't want to intrude," Jasper said. "I want you to have fun."

Alice frowned. "Jas…"

"You're the one who's always wanted friends. Not me."

Alice's brow furrowed. "Maybe it would be good for you to have friends outside of the family. And maybe it would be good for you to practice being around people more. There isn't even a risk with Lilah! You don't want to drink from her, do you?"

"No."

It shocked him. It was true. Lilah was the first human that Jasper had ever been around whose blood did not tempt him in the slightest. He was the last Cullen to become 'vegetarian.' He had the hardest time maintaining that diet, and thus, stayed away from humans much more than the rest of his family did. Alice had always said it wasn't good for him.

As Carlisle had explained, Lilah being a witch made her blood not smell edible. She smelled nice, Jasper could tell, like lavender and honey. Sweet, and like the outdoors, reminding him of something he couldn't quite put his finger on, something he'd smelled a long time ago. It was nice.

"So you can be around her and not have to worry," Alice said. "You don't have to come with us, but I think you should make an effort. You deserve to have a friend too, a friend who isn't just me, as amazing as I am…and I think Lilah's hurting for some friends too, being so far away from home and her family."

Alice was right. Jasper recalled the emotional bomb she'd set off. Her emotions were loud, somehow more powerful than the average person's, similar to how Edward described her thoughts as being loud. She was terrified of her father, but more because she didn't want anything happening to her family. She was terrified to be a burden on the Cullens, she was anxious, she was angry, she was hurt…a potent mix of emotions that indicated that, of course, Alice was right. Lilah needed friends.

Was he qualified to be someone's friend? He didn't think so. Not at all.

Yet he saw the way Alice smiled at him expectantly. She wanted it for him, for her, for Lilah. He couldn't stand to disappoint her. So he gave her the best promise he could.

"I'll try."